Culturally Contested Pedagogy: Battles of Literacy and Schooling between Mainstream Teachers and Asian Immigrant Parents

Guofang Li

feb 2012 · State University of New York Press

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Winner of the 2006 Edward Fry Book Award presented by the National Reading Conference

The voices of teachers, parents, and students create a compelling ethnographic study that examines the debate between traditional and progressive pedagogies in literacy education and the mismatch of cross-cultural discourses between mainstream schools and Asian families. This book focuses on a Vancouver suburb where the Chinese population has surpassed the white community numerically and socioeconomically, but not politically, and where the author uncovers disturbing cultural conflicts, educational dissensions, and "silent" power struggles between school and home. What Guofang Li reveals illustrates the challenges of teaching and learning in an increasingly complex educational landscape in which literacy, culture, race, and social class intertwine. Advocating for a greater cultural understanding of minority beliefs in literacy education and a more critical examination of mainstream instructional practices, Li offers a new theoretical framework and critical recommendations for teachers, schools, and parents.

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Guofang Li is Assistant Professor of Second Language and Literacy Education at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. She is the author of "East is East, West is West"? Home Literacy, Culture, and Schooling and the coeditor (with Gulbahar H. Beckett) of "Strangers" of the Academy: Asian Women Scholars in Higher Education.